Gordon’s thrived and died with the dot-com crowd

Gordon's House of Fine Eats when it opened in 1999. Kat Wade/The San Francisco Chronicle

The Brussels sprouts salad. Need I say more? That one dish alone would put Gordon’s House of Fine Eats at the top of my list of restaurants I wish were still around.

For this salad chef/owner Gordon Drysdale and his crew individually separated the leaves of the sprouts sauteeing them with crispy bacon, caramelized onions and pieces of hard-cooked egg, all moistened with red wine vinaigrette. (If you want to try the recipe at home, click here.)

Fortunately, that salad followed Drysdale to his other ventures. After a short four-year run 1999 to 2003, Drysdale closed the restaurant and opened Antica Pizzeria where the salad still shines.

The restaurant, now the location of Circolo, was a product of the late 1990s dot-com boom, when a lot more money was being spent than was being made. The poster child for that heady time was this restaurant in what was then known as Multimedia Gulch.

We’ve read about the emerging Multimedia Gulch — an area around KQED that doesn’t quite fit into either the Mission or Potrero Hill — but it seemed more like a real estate moniker than anything else. Now this trendy restaurant has brought the label to life. Few restaurants have been able to give visual definition to a neighborhood better than Gordon’s. There really is a Multimedia Gulch, and all the residents seem to congregate at Gordon’s.

The interior featured a 20-foot open-beamed ceiling, high-tech halogen lighting and concrete floors, augmented with bright color panels on the walls and ceiling, the colorful art installations that played off the polished mahogany and wenge tables. The sprawling 1930s-era warehouse was even large enough for the Real Restaurant folks to put their Pandora Bakery facility next door.

Drysdale, des amis. Bigelow 2010

Gordon Drysdale (right) at the opening of Des Amis in 2010. Catherine Bigelow/Special to The Chronicle

Because the customer base was largely young and single, the restaurant catered to that demographic as shown in the bar area that included 30 stools for single diners.

The menu was eclectic, designed for what at the time was known as “grazing.” (Does anyone use that term any more?)

In my initial review I wrote: “Even chef-owner Gordon Drysdale’s food taps into the restless attention spans of our high-tech society. The menu is cleverly divided into categories, with appetizers on the left and main courses on the right.”

The categories were Healthful, followed by Comfort, Luxury, Local Showcase and Continental. Drysdale’s food spanned the globe. Mexico inspired him in a dish of seared halibut, pumpkin seed sauce and pickled cactus. He looked to Asia for his Double Happiness Dungeness crab with steamed scallion buns. He also did asparagus spring rolls accompanied by an herb salad; matzo ball soup; pepperoni pizza; coquilles St. Jacques in a shell with a mushroom cream sauce; lobster bisque; and fried chicken coated in corn flakes.

If I could ever squeeze out a free night, you’d find me at Gordon’s, probably sitting at the counter overlooking the kitchen, enjoying the show and the food.